Saturday, May 4, 2013

Funny or Fascist


On a scale of 1 to 10, how funny would you say the following cartoon is?


 
"Good shootin', son. I'm pretty sure that was a squirrel."
                     (By Tom Toro in The New Yorker)



I'm giving it a 9.5 at least, because I find it hilarious.

Of course, you may not find it funny at all, in which case you are probably a fascist.

JK, IG.

What?  An explanation is called for?

OK, what gives this cartoon its ultimate bite is the social comment it makes about Americans of a certain mentality.  These Americans, sometimes described as “gun nuts,” hold one or both of the following opinions:

(a)    the U.S. Constitution gives ordinary citizens a sacrosanct right to wield assault weapons,

(b)   wielding such weapons is a good idea.

These are views with which I adamantly disagree, and, when I am in a cheerful mood, I often refer to people whose views clash with mine as fascists.


But Where Does Funny Come from, and Why Does It Sometimes Die at Cultural Boundaries?

When I showed this cartoon to a Chinese friend, she didn’t get it, even though she is a bright young woman who speaks English well and who has lived here for two years.  What gives?

It has often been said that humor is one of the most difficult things to translate across cultures, and, though this may be true, I haven’t heard any good explanations as to why this should be. 

In the case of this cartoon, I believe, the humor depends on an understanding of America’s ongoing gun-law debate, and is further augmented by a degree of frustration with the reasoning that is often offered in support of gun ownership. This “reasoning” boils down to a sentiment that says, “I love - yes, LOVE - my implements of death, and if you can’t sympathize with my devotion, you just better shut up.”

It is in this emotional hothouse that points (a) and (b) cited above grow roots.

Obviously, someone from China might have difficulty picking up on the humor of Tom Toro’s clever cartoon, depending as it does on a viewpoint embedded in contemporary cultural ideals.

Three factors are said to underlie humor: incongruity, superiority and release of tension.*  Different authors emphasize one or the other of these, but I believe each can contribute to funniness.

In the Toro cartoon, incongruity rules.  We see it in the horrendous destruction rendered by the boy’s shootin’ and in the very idea of hunting with an assault weapon, especially hunting a small creature like a squirrel.  But adding greatly to the hilarity is the incongruity between the madness of assault-weapon hunting and the calm demeanor of the Dad – a man who talks as though he were quietly commending his son on his fly-fishing or hoop skills.  A man who talks, in other words, as though he and his son weren’t doing something insanely violent.

But there’s more, and this is where the “release of tension” theory comes into play.  For me, the very idea that assault weapons should be readily available to whoever wants them is so destructive and so irrational, that hearing this position argued as though it were reasonable is frustrating.  And yet we do hear this argument being made on a daily basis.  Having the lunacy of this idea so beautifully skewered is, for me, downright therapeutic.  Laughing at the incongruity here is one thing, but thinking about the crazy people who might say “there is no incongruity here,” adds to the hilarity.

So how would someone from a less gun-crazy country like China understand this?  They probably would not, unless they were keeping a close eye on America’s gun debate, and unless they too felt stymied by the bizarre ideas that are offered by the gun lobby as normal.   

Culture boundaries: where laughter goes to die.

OK, next time, maybe I’ll find a Chinese cartoon and try to see why Americans might not get it.

Until then, .

____________________________________
*See Culture World January 6, 2013 for more on humor theory.






3 comments:

  1. I am posting here a comment that Tracy put on Facebook since she was unable to post it here (for some technical reason that neither of understands):

    ...

    The question of why humor rarely transcends cultural boundaries is an
    interesting one. Having written & rewritten my share of jokes, I think it could
    be because humor is so often about precise wording--different cultures,
    different languages... there ya go. Also, there's the attitude/outlook of one
    people vs. another. Senses of humor just tend to be different.

    But that aside, I have to defend the anti-gun control side for a moment. While I
    think the idea that someone would need a semi-automatic weapon for hunting is
    absurd, other reasons behind an anti-gun control stance do have merit, and they
    don't deserve mocking quotes around the word reason. The argument certainly does
    not boil down to "I love - yes, LOVE - my implements of death, and if you can’t
    sympathize with my devotion, you just better shut up." Citizens absolutely do
    have a right to bear arms, and yes, the rights in our Constitution are sacred,
    despite how the G.W. Bush and Obama administrations have treated them. The
    argument I believe to be extremely valid is self-defense. Let's face it, the
    "bad guys" will never turn in their weapons, so that would leave the law-abiding
    good guys vulnerable. And, although I know the ol' "sensible liberals" hate to
    hear it about their beloved ever-benevolent government, but there is also a very
    valid concern about being able to defend yourself against your own government.
    Before you laugh this off as typical non-liberal paranoia, take a look at
    history (after all, it tends to repeat). There is a long history of nations
    perpetrating great evil like genocide after taking away citizens' guns.
    Everything from Turkey back in 1911, disarming then killing Armenians, to Nazi
    Germany, to Rwanda and the Tutsi as recently as '94, and a bunch in between
    these. I would argue that the "just shut up" attitude comes as much from the
    anti-gun control crowd as it does from the anti-gun crowd.

    It's too bad we can't open our eyes and minds and see each other's sides better.
    Both have reason and validity.

    Tracy

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. So I'm not 100% in disagreement with you, but I disagree with a lot of what you
      say here.

      I do believe a lot of people are weirdly attached to guns, and this, I think has
      to do with aspects of American culture that I won't go into here. It has often
      been noted by the pro-gun folks that Switzerland is awash with guns. And yes it
      is, because in Switzerland men really are part of what could be called a
      militia, an organization specifically devoted to community defense. But what
      Switzerland does not have are a culture of gun nuttiness like ours, and an
      endless list of thousands of deaths every year due to people with access to
      guns. Also, I should note, the Swiss are not afraid of their government; their
      armed men were always thinking of fighting potential outside invaders and doing
      so in conjunction with their standing army and air force.

      I don't buy the constitutional argument in the U.S. for two reasons. One, the
      Constitution specifies that gun ownership is justified by the need for a
      militia, but virtually none of the gun people want to be armed as part of a
      militia. Justices used to be more careful about this distinction, but the gun
      lobby seems to have driven the militia concept right out of the Constitution in
      the minds of most people.

      Secondly, the Second Amendment was written at a time when a locally established
      militia could reasonably challenge a tyrannical government and, given that most
      governments were then tyrannical, this wasn't an unreasonable idea. But today,
      the idea that a neighborhood or city full of men and women with weapons, even
      assault weapons, could fight off the Pentagon is ridiculous. I'm not quite sure
      why the stupidity of this notion isn't more widely understood, but it probably,
      like so much of this debate, comes from the bounty of misinformation with which
      the gun lobby pollutes our culture. At any rate, the Second Amendment itself
      should be amended to make it more relevant to the 21st century. That's what
      amendments are for: doing away with some ideas that have been embedded in the
      document even though they don't deserve "sacrosanct" status.

      Imagine that the citizens of Orlando were to be so furious at the U.S.
      Government that all the armed men and women here vowed to take over the city and
      defend it. How would these citizens stand up to, say, the First Armored
      Division, the Air Cavalry and an Air Force squadron or two? There would be no
      fight to speak of. The citizens would be first, disorganized, second, mainly
      lacking in training, and finally, unless they had access to anti-aircraft
      missiles and anti-tank guns, they would be overwhelmed, trained and organized or
      not. It is simply nutty to imagine that citizens with their guns could defend
      themselves against the government in this day and age.

      Given that the military has the capacity to overrun any collection of armed
      citizens it wants to at any time of its choosing, what does actually protect us?
      I would say the mentality of the men and women in uniform. As long as our
      educational system successfully teaches the values of democracy and manages to
      link democracy to patriotism, the Pentagon will not be able to go after us. If
      it ordered the First Armored Division to take over a given city, the soldiers
      would not jump into their tanks and go for it without question, because this
      would violate some very basic patriotic ideals that our educational system and
      American culture in general support. People often say that it is to our
      military that we owe our freedom, but I don't believe the soldiers who fought in
      Iraq or Afghanistan did anything to promote or protect our freedom. However,
      the high school civics and history teachers that helped educate them certainly
      did.

      END OF PART I









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    2. Part II of Reply to Tracy

      Most democracies restrict gun ownership, some quite closely, and the citizens in
      these countries are not afraid of their government and don't imagine themselves
      fighting it off in the streets. So why compare us to Turkey in 1911? Doesn't it
      make sense to compare the U.S. to Australia, the U.K., France, Japan, etc.,
      rather than to Turkey of a hundred years ago?

      I will also call you on your sarcastic comment about liberals' "beloved
      ever-benevolent government." The government is obviously not ever-benevolent
      and I don't love it. A more accurate statement would be that the government,
      when the corrupting influence of (mainly corporate) campaign money doesn't
      derail it, is the mainstay of democracy in our country. If I have to choose
      between letting elected representatives or BP officials decide how careful oil
      drilling equipment should be maintained in order to protect the environment, I
      will go with the government every time. In general, if we let powerful
      money-seeking machines like BP, Enron, AIG, Citicorp, WalMart, etc., etc. rule
      our fates, we will be crushed under their feet as they follow their
      single-minded and insatiable quest for profits. Government, you might say, is
      the lesser of two evils. In a society like ours, big, powerful institutions
      necessarily rule our lives. The most important question we face is which of
      these major institutions should hold the upper hand, the insatiable
      profit-seekers or that which is ultimately beholden to the voters?

      Finally, I do agree that self-defense is a reasonable justification that a gun
      owner might turn to and so is hunting for sport. But neither of these requires
      assault weapons. Furthermore, the gun lobby seems to fall into the category of
      a collection of corporate entities whose motto is "Ethics don't matter and
      neither do human lives; only our profits matter." Why else would they
      systematically oppose such sensible regulations as required background checks,
      limits on murderous weapons like those used by the military, and tracer elements
      in explosives so that the point of purchase for bomb-making materials might be
      traceable? There are more, but these few are telling enough it seems to me. I
      think that whatever the NRA began as, it has now become a straightforward
      lobbying entity for gun manufacturers and distributors.

      So, on reasonable notions of self-defense as a justification for gun ownership,
      yes, I agree. But not on the rest.

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